“The Two Americas” guy must be trying to outdo Wal-Mart now that he’s built himself a 28,200 sq ft home, bigger than our local Wal-Mart.Or maybe he’s planning on having the Two Americas over for a party: Dean Barnett says the manse has

an indoor recreation building that contains a basketball court, a squash court, two stages, a bedroom, kitchen, bathrooms, swimming pool, a four-story tower, and a room designated “John’s Lounge.”

Two stages: the better for practicing those campaign speeches? Who’ll be at the other stage?

Hmm.

Casa de Fausta has one shed that houses the lawnmower and the sports and camping gear. And my “main house” has three johns, but no “John’s Lounge”. On the other hand, The Husband pays more attention to me than what he does his hair, a preferrable situation for all involved.

If Edwards expects people “to find comfort with someone who’s being straight with them” – meaning himself – he must really believe that Everyone loves a good hypocrite.

Special thanks to the friend that sent the photo

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Note I seem to be having the same email problem I had a few days ago where I send one email and the recipient gets multiple copies. My apologies for the inconvenience.

greatest Republican of our time, we should revisit the crucial victory lessons from President Reagan. In all his campaigns for the California governorship and for the Presidency, Reagan demonstrated the timeless value of three essential political characteristics: clarity, cheerfulness and unity. If Republicans manage to emphasize and exemplify these traits they will win in 2008 and beyond and re-enforce their status as the nation’s majority party.

1. CLARITY. Throughout his public career, Reagan associated himself with a handful of simple but profound ideas: government isn’t the solution, it’s the problem; the people deserve lower taxes and less regulation; Communism must be defeated, not accommodated. In his public pronouncements he never varied from these core principles and he never worried about repeating himself, confident in the knowledge that the truth always sounds fresh and appropriate.

A popular fast face-lift is called Sculptra, a 30-minute procedure involving a series of injections (a mix of poly-L-lactic acid material mixed with water) used to stimulate the growth of collagen and provide a gradual increase in skin thickness.

Update, Wednesday 31 JanuaryLileks sheds a most unromantic light on the lights-out:

Let us all be inspired by the darkness. It seems to be part of a general French effort spearheaded by some toothless meth-freak

To see the meth-freak you’ll have to go to his post.

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Later…I was looking at this post and would like to ask any of you who have any idea of how to do blog things,Currently I have my encoding setting at Universal (Unicode UTF-8). Unfortunately, after I switched to my own domain the Blogger platform doesn’t seem to want to accept foreign punctuation marks.Does anyone know what I should do to remedy this?

There’s the acceptance in the Western World, in the name of multiculturalism and who knows what else, of societies that indulge into what for most of us is inherently revolting, aberrant degeneracy: the weaponization of children. Children suicide bombers, children witnessing public acts of unspeakable barbarity, children used as shields during gun battles, and the corpses of handicapped children (link in French) used as (warning: graphic images)death porn in a propaganda war.

Fars has published pictures from “Hossain’s toddlersconference [implicitly means toddlers who are ready to fight for Hossain till ‘martyrdom’]”. Imam Hossain is the third Shia Imam, killed in Karbala, more than 1300 years ago these days. Since then, he has been the source of inspiration for Shias towards “martyrdom”.

I asked a friend to translate what the headbands that the babies are wearing say – “Allah Akbar”, the suicide bomber’s cry.

The origins of Ashura: When the Omayyad Moslem army arrived at Karbala, Ali, the last blood relative of Mohammed found that his cowardly army had deserted him. He rode out with about 30 of his closest followers, and they were slaughtered. Muslims flaggelate and mutilate themselves on the each anniversary of his death to show remorse for deserting him before the battle.)

Now that the American women politicians are talking about the children, maybe it’s time we start judging this behavior for what it is: depravity.

The 6-year-old boy screamed and shook his head to avoid the razor blade. But his father held him firmly as Hajj Khodor parted the boy’s black hair and sliced his forehead three times with the blade.

Ali Madani’s cries became more violent as blood gushed from the wound, covering his small, terrified face. His father and a few other men, waving daggers, broke into a religious chant, recalling how the 7th-century Shiite Muslim saint, Imam Hussein, was decapitated, his head placed on a lance.…“We’re used to it,” said Mahmoud Jaber, 43, who brought his five boys and two girls for the ritual. “We’ve been doing this since we were kids. I started when I was 3. It doesn’t hurt because the cry of pain goes away with the faith.”

Historically, Nicaraguans have always used their southern neighbour as a refuge during periods of violence, such as the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza or the war of the 1980s. But since the 1990s migration has been driven by the struggle for economic survival. After the fighting ended, demobilisation left thousands of soldiers and counter-revolutionaries on the loose, with no resources or future, in a country whose economy was unable to integrate them. At the time, the Nicaraguan government’s priority was to privatise and reduce public spending. Costa Rica, which has impressive economic growth and a remarkably well-developed welfare state for Central America, seemed an accessible El Dorado.

As I have said before, there is no such thing as “Hispanics”. The article explains,

“Costa Ricans see Nicaraguans as a negative value,” said Carlos Sandoval, a sociologist at San José university. He argued that Costa Ricans construct their identity around powerful ideas: the paleness of their skin, which is unusual in Central America (and is the result of the fact that there were only a few indigenous inhabitants when the conquistadores arrived); the stability of a democracy that has experienced little violence; and the success of an economy and a welfare state unique in the region. Costa Rica and its neighbours describe it as “the Switzerland of Central America”. Its ecotourist-friendly beaches and jungles, its relaxed way of life attract prosperous foreign tourists in numbers its neighbours can only dream about.

From this perspective, Nicaragua, with its wars and chronic instability, seems an immature country condemned to poverty. In Costa Rica, the dark-skinned immigrants are often described as violent, ignorant and untrustworthy, as thieves and alcoholics. “No seas Nica” (“don’t be an idiot”) is a common insult. This latent xenophobia, and correspondingly strong anti-Costa Rican feelings in Nicaragua, rises to the surface each time the perennial conflict over navigation rights on the San Juan river turns nasty.

President Saca did his share of finger-pointing, lambasting the US, in particular, for worsening the problem of gangs (knows as “maras”) by deporting back to El Salvador thousands of Salvadoran nationals who had served time in US jails for crimes committed while in the US. According to the US Department of Homeland Security, there was a 26% rise in the number of Salvadorans deported from the US between January and September 2006. Among the deportees, almost one-quarter have criminal records. Since most have not committed any crimes in El Salvador, the authorities are unable to arrest them upon arrival at the international airport.

HE TOOK office as Mexico’s president only on December 1st, but Felipe Calderon has lost no time in putting pressure on the country’s powerful drug gangs. Last month he dispatched 7,000 troops and police to the central state of Michoacan. Forces of similar size have since been sent to Tijuana on the northern border, and to the Pacific resort of Acapulco. On January 19th, the government extradited four drug kingpins and a dozen lesser figures to the United States for trial. Notably, they included Osiel Cárdenas, the head of the so-called “Gulf Cartel”, by far the most powerful drug gangster to be extradited so far.

This flurry of action responded to a “real anxiety in some parts of the country” that organised crime was “out of control”, Mr Calderon told El Pais, a Spanish newspaper, this week. There were 2,100 drug-related murders last year, up from 1,300 in 2005. Some 600 killings took place in Michoacán alone in 2006. Many of the murders involved brutal cruelty: in a notorious case, five severed heads were dumped in a dance hall in Michoacán. Much of the violence stems from a turf war between the Gulf Cartel and its main rival, based in Sinaloa. Paradoxically, this was triggered by arrests made by the previous government of Vicente Fox.

Two things compound the problem. The first is the continuing demand for drugs across the border in the United States. The second is that during the seven decades of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, defeated by Mr Fox in 2000, the main objective of policing was political control rather than crime fighting.

What do all these items have in common? They all pertain to immigration.